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A rare and unusual ceremony will take place in North Dakota next Wednesday, August 11. The event celebrates the transfer of a ceremonial song commemorating an alliance in the 1820's of the Assinaboine, the Cree, the Chippewa (Ojibway/Saulteaux) and the Michif peoples at Buffalo Lodge Lake, in what is now northwest North Dakota.

The ceremony will be held during a "Traditional Elders and Youth Circle" taking place August 10 - 15, 2004 at the Turtle Mountain Reservation at Belcourt, North Dakota.

The song titled "Many Eagle Set Thirsty Dance (Sun Dance) Song" will be
formally given to Tony Belcourt, President of the Metis Nation of Ontario, by the keeper of the song, Elder Francis Eagle Heart Cree, a great grand-son of Many Eagle Set. This event is the culmination of a two year search by Mr. Belcourt for a traditional Michif song that he could bring to a ceremony to commemorate a Nation to Nation relationship which has recently been forged between the Metis Nation and the Anishinabek Nation in Ontario.

The song came to Many Eagle Set in a dream. It symbolizes, for all time,
the historical bonds amongst the four distinct peoples (Assiniboine, Cree,
Ojibway and Michif). The ceremonial transfer of the song will be held in the
morning of Wednesday, August 11th. In the afternoons of both August 11th and 12th, there will be discussion and storytelling about the song and the events at the time of its original creation. Elder Francis Cree will also teach the song to those present including the members of the Provisional Council of the Metis Nation of Ontario and Deputy Grand Council Chief of the Anishinabek Nation, Nelson Toulouse, Rosemary MacPhearson, Spokesperson for the National Metis Women's Secretariat and Elders and representatives of the Manitoba Metis Federation.

When asked to whom the song will belong after the ceremony in North
Dakota, Mr Belcourt replied: "It will always belong to Elder Francis Cree and to those others to whom he has given it. It will now also be mine personally, but I will only be a keeper, and it will be my responsibility to pass it on to others. It will be ours to share and give to others. It gives us contact with our primordial past. It relates us to our ancestors and to our descendants. We are vehicles through which the song is sung and our job will be to ensure that the song is sung long after we are gone. We will have to transfer it, and by singing the song we protect the alliance."

Many Eagle Set Thirsty Dance (Sun Dance) Song

A brief summary of historical context for the song
By Nicholas Vrooman

It was the early 1820s. The Cree, Assiniboine, Chippewa Ojibwe/Saulteaux), and Michif came together at Buffalo Lodge Lake, in what is now northwest North Dakota, but then open indigenous buffalo pasture prairie, to form one of the most significant alliances ever to occur at the center of the continent.

It was land contested between the United States and Canada as belonging to (in their terms, respectively) either Louisiana or Rupert's Land. It resides along the border region that ranges from Minnesota to Montana's
Rocky Mountain Front now referred to by peoples of pre-Euroamerican
nationalism as the Medicine Line.

The Fur Trade was trapping out in the Woodlands by the late 1700s.
Assiniboine (Nakota) had already split from their Dakota and Lakota relations to the east and moved to the west to become Plains people a few generations back. The Anishnabe (Chippewa/Saulteaux) were pushing west from the Great Lakes, competing with the Siouxs and forcing them out onto the prairie. There the Siouxs formed alliance with the Cheyenne who were the inhabitors of the land between the Red and the Missouri Rivers. The Anishnabe from the east, and their Cree cousins from the northeast, had been coming out onto the Plains for a generation and more.

Already, by the mid-18th Century there was a distinct society of
Mixedbloods at the Forks of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers. Some were Bungi, the offspring of Orkney Viking fathers (the first employees of the Hudson's Bay Company dispatched to the hinterlands after 1670) with various Algonkian speaking tribal women in the area. Others were French stock descendants of LaVerendrye's men who came to the territory in the 1730 and 40s and married within the same maternal tribal variations of the country. A third group, which would come to comprise the most numerous and politically and economically savvy current within that newly forming mixedblood society, were a mixture themselves of the southern Great Lakes and the Mississippi/Missouri River Métis. These Métis were the descendants of the Old Régime France in North America, left dispossessed in the United States after the French and Indian War, who had been mixing within the diverse tribal milieu south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi, and among themselves, for the previous 150 years.

The Assiniboine, Cree, Ojibwe, and Michif were squeezed between the Sioux and Cheyenne in the south, and the Hudson's Bay and Nor'westers to the north. When in 1821 the HBC and NWC combined to become one, and the Siouxs to the south increased their push on extending territory, the need for a formalized alliance between the Assiniboine, Cree, Ojibwe, and Michif became paramount.

As the Ojibwe and Michif were the newest comers to the territory, they
needed to be brought in on the workings of the Great Mystery in that part of the world. A Thirsty Dance was called, where the dance would be given to the newcomers. The Ojibwes were Mdewin, out of the Woodlands, but now needed to have the Medicine of the Plains. The Michifs were Romish (Catholic), but some were to take on both traditions, just as many Ojibwes maintained their Mdewin.

The Buffalo Lodge Lake Thirsty Dance (Sun Dance) would form a bond
between these peoples that would create a unified front when dealing with the HBC and other Euroamerican fur trade outfits, as well as any of their
indigenous enemies to the south and west.

Many Eagle Set was the Cree Assiniboine leader of the dance. It is said
it was the largest Sun Dance ever to occur on the Northern Plains. There were fourteen center poles and fifteen hundred dancers comprised of the groups.

Many Eagle Set received a song from Gishay Manitou to commemorate the Unity of the People and symbolize the alliance made through that Thirsty Dance at Buffalo Lodge Lake. That song was given to the people and lives on through Francis Eagleheart Cree a Thirsty Dance Priest and spiritual and cultural leader of the Turtle Mountain people. Francis Cree is the great grandson of Many Eagle Set. This song is sung every year at the Sun Dance on the Turtle Mountains commemorating the Alliance between the Assiniboine, Cree, Ojibwe and Michif, which has remained intact since the dance at Buffalo Lodge Lake.